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Sunday, May 4, 2014

BookSparks 20 questions with... Me!

After I released Wake a few months ago, BookSparks did a little interview with me. Due to continued interest and a recent spike in sales of Whisper and Wake, I decided to post the interview here for fans to read. For those of you who are waiting for Book 3, thank you for your patience! It is coming, and I think it will be worth the wait!

20 Questions
with BookSparks author Dana Faletti!

1.What was your biggest inspiration while writing WAKE?

So
many things inspired me while I was writing the sequel to Whisper, it’s hard to
narrow it down to one. I can say, though, there is a radio show called “Grace
to You” with John Macarthur, and he did a series about angels. I listened to it
several times, and it gave me some incredible insight into the Biblical
writings of angels as warriors.

2.What is usually on your nightstand?
A glass of water, my Kindle, several
books, my earrings, my wedding rings, random toys or trinkets that belong to my
daughters, a candle, my cat trying to sip from the glass of water.

3.Which character in WAKE is
most like yourself?Hmmm… my mother told me Callie reminds her of me as a teen. I always
had super amplified feelings, kind of like Callie has for Joshua. Callie is
much cooler than I ever was, though.

4.Which authors have most influenced
your writing? Frank Peretti and Ted
Dekker in subject matter.They write
about Christian themes –angels and demons, end of the world type stuff. Jodi
Picoult and Karen Marie Moning in style. I am a big fan of writing from different
points of view. I love short powerful sentences that drive home an emotion.

5.What is your favorite scene
in WAKE? My favorite scene is when
Callie visits Joshua at his house after she is worn out from fighting Darks all
day. Joshua is her happy place, so to speak. The two of them struggle with how
passionate their feelings are for each other and how to keep themselves from
crossing the line. The scene deals with authentic desire and restraint.

6.What do you think is Callie’s
best trait? What I love most about
Callie is that she has no idea how amazing she is. She doesn’t realize that
she’s beautiful or brave, and it always surprises her when she gets a glimpse
of her true nature.

7.Are any characters in WAKE based
on a real person? All of the characters,
except for Silas and Jules,are loosely
based on real people. Callie is based on my niece, Cassie. Her parents are my
brother and sister-in-law. Romuel’s character came from a dream I had about my
father-in law, dressed in a toga with long hair and crazy abs. It was a really
weird dream J…

8.What is something your
readers would be surprised to learn about you? I am a die-hard fan of a capella musical groups.I love love super love Pitch Perfect, and I
am so bummed that The Sing-Off was cancelled last year. Best singing show ever.

9.Where is your favorite place
to write? I have a comfy oversized
orange leather chair with ottoman that a friend was going to throw in the garbage.
He gave it to my husband and I instead, and it ended up in our bedroom. This is
where I wrote Whisper. Lately, I’ve been writing prolifically at local coffee
shops. Much of Wake was written at Starbucks – how cliché, right? J

10.What did you want to be
when you grew up? I wanted to be a
Broadway star. Now, I live that dream through watching my girls sing on stage.
I still love singing… with them.

11.What is your favorite book
of all time? This is just a crazy
question. I can’t narrow it down to one book. One series – The Fever Series, by
Karen Marie Moning – has seemed to ruin all other books for me.

12.When is your birthday? September 10th.

13.What is your dream vacation?
A year in Europe. I’ve been to Italy
three times and France several times. I have wonderful family in both countries,
and we visit often. I’d like to spend a nice chunk of time there, eating,
drinking, sleeping on pebble beaches in the afternoons and speaking Italian or
French with strangers- that- have- become -family late into the nights.

15. When naming your characters, do you give any thought to the actual
meaning? No, most of the time, names
just come to me, they feel right. Evil characters’ names are harder for me to
nail down. I confess to having tossed around the idea of naming villains after
some people who have given me grief in real life. You know – cross me and I’ll
write you into my book – and you won’t be a pretty character! No, I actually
don’t do that! I love Joshua Pride. My
favorite name.I have no idea how I came
up with Silas and Jules.

16. What is Callie’s favorite song (or theme
song)? Beautiful Soul.

17. Any recent works that you admire? Beautiful Ruins, by Jess Walter. Delicious book.

18.If you could co-write a
book with any author, who would it be? Again,
a really hard question… Pat Conroy, maybe? His writing is so vivid, it places
me wherever the characters are. I’ve read Prince of Tides three times, and
every time I even think of the book, I can smell sulfur, taste sea salt on my
tongue. I can close my eyes at any moment and be at Luke, Savannah, and Tom’s
little shack-like house on their tiny plot of island. I’d like Pat’s writing
style to rub off on me a little. It would help me in my next project.

19.How have your personal
experiences affected your writing? Shortly after I started writing Wake, my
husband had a very serious health scare. He was extremely sick for a few
months, and I couldn’t write Wake at all. I did write some of another project I
am working on. The story is much more serious.For a long time after his health improved, I was still not in the right
place to write something as whimsical as Wake.

20.What is your writing
process? It is still very much evolving,
as I think it always will be. With Whisper, I didn’t plan much. I had an idea
and wrote a scene that ended up being in the middle of the book. Later, I
started at the beginning of the story and wrote from chapter one through the
end, then came back and wrote a prologue, then an epilogue. I never had an
outline – I’ll confess. With Wake, I outlined some, but honestly, some ideas
just come to me as I’m writing, and I go with them. One thing I really believe in as a writer is
the importance of critique partners – good ones. I’m so lucky to have a group
of them. There are six of us who critique each others’ work twice a month. They
help me to know what works and what definitely does NOT, and they also edit for
grammar, typos, the dastardly extra spaces!